Managing your Team with monday.com

This guide will explain how to best use monday.com to effectively manage your team and provide you with useful tips to maximize your use of the platform as a manager.

monday.com can be used for all aspects of managing your team - not just for managing your projects and tasks. It’s also important to understand that monday.com was built as a collaboration tool, not just a project management tool, as the scope of collaboration goes far beyond project management. This means that once you are set up properly and you and your team are using the platform, it will become the central (if not the only) way that you and your team will work together and communicate. So, less time in long tedious meetings and more time spent on the things that matter 😊

Work actively with a High-Level Project Board and Low-Level Task Board

High-Level Project Board

We know managers have their hands full when leading multiple projects at once. Building a high-level project board, to be used as a project dashboard, will help you and your team keep tabs on the stage and status of each project and will provide a great view of the big picture. It is important to only focus on the simple overview of each project without including the small details that can be added to a low-level board (shown below).

You should build your high-level project board using status columns to show the main phases or milestones of each project, allowing for an easy click to update progress. Use a person column (or multiple person columns or a Team column, available on our Column Center) to assign and show which of your team members are responsible for the entire project, or for a specific phase; also giving accountability to each team member. Use a date column to add the major deadlines of each project. Building your board in this way will ensure you’re always on top of what’s going on and can evaluate whether you’re likely to meet your goals. Using the Link (available on our Column Center) or Tags column allow you to better the link the two board types, allowing for a seamless transition between them 😊

The Task Board

Alongside your high-level project board, you should work from a lower-level task board to determine what you and your team will actually be doing week to week. Work according to periods of time, for example, weekly, 2 weekly or quarterly periods, whatever best suits you and your team, but always add achievable goals to this board. Prioritize which tasks you’ll work on in each period of time and split your board into groups to represent the periods you’re working to; for example, this week, next week or November, December. A great way to stay synced is the Week column (available on our Column Center) which allows you to set the week you wish for your team members to push forward with a project.

By splitting your tasks this way, you and your team can ensure the workload is shared out fairly and that each member of your team has a realistic amount of work to be completed within each time period. By always looking ahead, your team will know what’s coming up, allowing them to manage their time more effectively.

Your team members will now have the ability to realistically complete tasks and report this in a fun, visual way. The completion of tasks, “turning the board green” as we like to say, will be viewed as a 'trophy of achievement' and significantly reduces the need for delegation and micromanaging.

Building Transparency

Your high-level project board and task board should be main boards. This ensures that everything is transparent and accessible by everyone on the team. A high-level project board which everyone can access, will ensure that everyone from the intern to the high-level managers will be aligned on the same end goals. Your team will also understand how their tasks fit into the bigger picture, giving their work relevance and importance which has been proven to build motivation.

Building Accountability

Assigning a team member (or an entire team using the Team column, accessible on our Column Center) to each task or project using the Person/team columns will make your team members accountable for their work (in their eyes and in the eyes of others).

Team members will naturally be more motivated to complete their tasks by the deadline (or sooner) and to do the best of their ability. Furthermore, you can measure how efficiently and effectively your team members are working. Everyone knows who to speak to about each task or project, who to hold accountable for any mistakes (fingers crossed there are none) and who to recognize and congratulate for great work.

Tip: Our research found that recognition for good work is one of the most important factors for determining happiness at work.

Get a visual overview

Add a Timeline column to your high-level project board and task board and use the default view to see the spread of work of all of your tasks and projects. This will allow you to check the division of your workload between your team. It also lets you see who on your team has capacity and when they’ll be slammed.

Utilizing this feature within your main boards, so that everyone on the team can see it, will remove office politics and misunderstandings. An open, transparent working environment will make your team happier and more empowered. Seeing how their tasks and projects fall over a period of time, and how busy the rest of the team are (who they also might be relying on to help them complete their own tasks), allows each member of your team to plan their time accurately to ensure they meet deadlines.

Search/Filter within a board

You can filter any board according to the person (or team, coming soon) assigned to the tasks or projects. This gives you a quick and easy way to check how you have spread out your workload between your team and the status of the tasks each of your team members are working on.

Using multiple filters across the board, e.g. “Lea” in the Person column and “Working on it” on the Status column, you can filter down into which tasks each of your team members are yet to complete. You can also check the tasks or projects according to their due date, passed due, this week, this month etc.. By e.g. searching “Lea” in the person column and “Passed due date” in the date column, will allow you to measure how efficiently and effectively your team members are working but most important you can see what tasks are not completed on time and get an understanding of why.

Communicate to the whole team

Make sure you’re communicating with the right people at all times by creating teams on your monday account. You can @mention the team to communicate with the team altogether, without having to type out each individual’s name (and potentially forget someone), making general announcements easy. This can also be used to include the full team on a task by subscribing all to the pulse or @mentioning them to keep them in the loop.

It can also save you time when adding subscribers to a new board. By @mentioning the team name in the Add Subscribers box, you’ll add everyone in that team in one go, so no one will miss updates on the board.

Review together

At the end of every week, sit together and go through your task board. Turn everything which is “Done” to green and feel great about how much you’ve achieved together. This is a great tool to motivate your team and create team spirit, but also makes coming into work the following week less stressful knowing what is complete and what is to come.

More useful boards for managing your team on monday.com

Training and Knowledge Base Boards

Building a board for training is a great way to allow a new team member to teach themselves and look for answers to the questions they’re bound to have when starting out in your team.

You can split the board into groups based on subject, add the question as a pulse and then include the detail of the answer in the updates section.

If you want to use your knowledge base board as part of your training, adding status columns for each new team member and asking them to update the status for each question when they have reviewed it. This will allow you to see what they have covered and what they’re yet to review.

By investing time into building a board like this, you’ll save time training new team members and won’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. It can always be used to maintain knowledge on the team, so everyone is always up-to-date.

Weekly shifts board

If you and your team work in shifts, you can even use monday for allocating shifts week to week. The example above shows a great, clear way of doing this. If team members then need to swap shifts, they can do so independently, without your involvement, by adding an update in the day they want to swap and @mentioning the other team member they want to swap with to request the change.

It gives both you and the team a quick visual view of who is working when, so there is never any confusion.

Holiday requests and approvals board

Create a board for all of your team’s holiday requests as well! Tell your team members to add their requests for vacation in the correct group (by quarters / months / Pending Vs. Approved - you choose) and then mark the status or move the pulse to the “Approved” group upon approval. You’ll never forget about a request and can keep track on who is out of the office at all times, to ensure you always have enough people around.

Talks

There is always a need to have conversations with your teammates which aren’t connected to the tasks or projects in your boards; to discuss office rules, general company culture, socials and nights out, when you’re going to organize lunch (and what you’re going to order). You can either build a Talks board and start talking or create a General group on a weekly tasks board and name a pulse Talks! Your team can add new pulses for subjects they want to talk about. Using a Talks board / pulse is a great way to build team spirit and give your team members a voice.

So, start building your boards and get the team active!

Let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or on-boarding stories to share at support@monday.com